Government Spending and the Endless Recession: Cut Spending Now

As Boskin points out, the Netherlands in the mid-1990s and Sweden in the mid-2000s "stabilized their budgets without recession [with] $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar of tax hikes."

And he notes that Canada reduced government spending in the mid-1990s and early 2000s by an amount equal to 8 percent of gross domestic product.

Those cuts weren't painless, but they put Canada on a trajectory different from ours. Canadian voters value budget surpluses, and Canada managed to avoid almost all the bad effects of the 2007-09 recession.